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discipline

Ahh, Wayne Rooney, the newly-dubbed double captain of Manchester United and the England National Team. A few short games into his tenures, his ability to lead from the pitch is already being called into question. As per the norm, Twitter went wild with armchair criticism. His antics even drew the ire of the former X-Factor contestant, paragon of musical genius and Crystal Palace’s most reviled fan, Steve Brookstein.

There is simply no doubting his innate qualities as a footballer. We’d all love to see more consistent performances in an England shirt (and thus show us he deserves his place), but his class remains permanent. Rooney has given us a lot of moments to savour, from his delightful chipped finished against Portsmouth in the 2007 FA Cup, to the overhead kick that put Manchester City in their place in 2011, all the way back to when his winning goal broke the streak of Arsenal’s Invincibles, firmly placing him on the map as one of England’s hottest prospects in years.

Being a gifted footballer helps those playing around you play better, as they often look to Rooney to provide a moment of magic capable of changing a game. His work ethic for a while was hard to rival, always running back in search of the ball, making tackles. His determination and ability rank him highly in terms of being captain material.

Experienced and passionate

A good captain at the top level needs passion and two kinds of experience: the experience of winning, and club loyalty. There is no denying that Rooney has passion for football in spades, but I’ll get onto that a little later. The guy gets criticised for running his mouth at his players and officials, but what kind of good captain doesn’t demand more for his teammates? That doesn’t fight for every throw in?

During his 10-year spell at The Red Devils, Rooney has won 13 trophies. Few players in the English game can claim the accolades Rooney has to his name. Some may question his loyalty, bringing up all the bumper contracts he has signed and his transfer requests, but at the end of the day, he’s the most experienced player they have in their ranks and he’s still there. If he really wanted to leave, he would have done a long time ago.

Addressing Certain Cons

Discipline

There seems to be some misconception when it comes to Wayne’s disciplinary record. He has six career red cards. Here’s a list of the current captains of last season’s top 10 Premier League clubs and where they rank when compared to Rooney. Oh, and Lee Cattermole is thrown in there for good measure. All figures are taken from premierleague.com

Someone is beating Cattermole in the red card stakes? The world I knew is gone.

Purely based on top flight club football, Jags is surely all of the haters’ choice for perfect captain, because he rarely gets booked or sent off. In Rooney’s case, it’s clear he gets a lot of yellow cards, probably because he likes to get stuck in, like Kevin Davies always used to. This thing about red cards though, it’s not founded when he’s wearing a red shirt. In this list, the likes of Vincent Kompany and Steven Gerrard rank lower than he does, with most of those reds likely coming at a time when they were captain.

His England record is pretty poor though. 3 reds in 97 England appearances is pretty bad, especially considering that two of them came for the stamp on Ricardo Carvalho at the 2006 World Cup and the kick on Miodrag Dzudovic against Montenegro in 2011. Hardly the actions of a captain, but again, we’ll come back to his ways in an England shirt later.

Outside of Football

A lot of people, including good old Brookstein above, often criticise Rooney for his public antics, such as that time he solicited sexual relations from two older women, one a mother of 6 and the other a grandmother. That was ten years ago. You want to talk about public image? Everyone was screaming for Steven Gerrard to be England captain all those years ago… the same Gerrard who gets into bar fights? This article claims Rooney isn’t “a John Terry“… the same John Terry who sleeps with people’s wives and racially abuses fellow players? Come off it. A lot of footballers are monumental assholes off the pitch, and have done stupid things; that doesn’t mean they can’t lead.

Legitimate Cons

“Falling into” United Captaincy and The Curious Case of England

While I do believe Wayne Rooney is the correct choice for the United captaincy, I also believe that he fell into it. If it’s not Rooney, who would it be? RVP? Carrick? Fletcher? Jones? They’re all too injury prone, and a captain should be a regular starter. All the other players available aren’t leadership material either. Being the only candidate for a job doesn’t make you the best candidate.

As for his England captaincy, I always felt like it should have been given to Gary Cahill. I’m old fashioned in the sense that I believe that the captain shouldn’t be an attacker. Defenders are natural leaders as they always have to marshal the back line (in England’s case, Gaz Caz), making them ideal captains. For England, other, better options were available. His disciplinary record and God awful performances in a white shirt in recent years makes me consider his position in the England squad, let alone as captain. If he wants to lead England, it’s time he started pumping in consistently world-class displays like we know he can.

The Media

Probably Rooney’s biggest obstacle is the media. Twitter gives regular people the freedom to publicly run their mouth from the safety of their own keyboard, and the two tweets above are but two examples of innumerous hate tweets for Rooney, from people who are supporters of United to those who just have an irrational hatred for him. These articleshere are just examples of attacks on Rooney without looking at the facts and the statistics. Rooney has been poor this year? Well, he’s a striker, his job is to score. He’s scored at least double figures in every season in a United shirt, and has 3 in 6 this season. He’s capable of double figures for assists too, like we saw last season, a season where United finished 7th with Rooney’s form as their season’s sole positive.

Henry Winter calls it perfectly in this article. He’s being set up to fail by a media intent on tearing him apart for every mistake he makes, no matter how minor it may be. He hadn’t been sent off for three years. He has curbed his enthusiasm somewhat recently. He’s growing into the role and will have learned from his mistake, but people, in particular United fans, need to get off his back and let him do his job. Judge him, and the whole United/England squads, at the end of the season.